The situation is the same at work. We haven't had many requests so things are slow. I have tried to do some of the projects I was supposed to do this summer. I have spent hours in front of the computer, changing the location marker for thousands of books in the database. They were marked as placed at the main library but they are in storage. I have also changed many books to non-circulating, as our loan rules have changed and the information in the database should reflect that. The only noteworthy thing that has happened this week was the cake we received from a visiting researcher. She was very grateful for the service (which my colleague said was really nothing worth mentioning). In any case, we got a tasty cake for the afternoon coffee today.
This Saturday I went to Ystad on the south coast. It's a nice town that I visit now and then. This time there was an international food market, the regular flea market and the other shops were open, of course. Lots to look at. There were sales everywhere. I bought three pairs of jeans in one store. It may seem excessive but there was an offer of taking three sales items and paying for two. Very affordable. I was lucky that they had three pairs left in my size. It's the kind of jeans I like very much so there was little hesitation from my side.
Apart from this, nothing much has happened. I went to Malmö yesterday evening but it wasn't possible to see the stand up show I had planned on as there were an incredible amount of people in the audience and the PA-system didn't reach that far. But I spent some time in the park and did a short round in a mall before I returned home again. At least the weather is better now, it's around 23 centigrades and sunny.
Wednesday, July 20, 2016
Thursday, July 14, 2016
More work issues
Last Friday my former boss came to visit. He hadn't seen the new office space so I brought him on a short tour of it. He was rather impressed. We also talked about all the book moves in the stacks and storages.
I got some back problems last week so I decided to take it easy this past weekend. I only did some minor chores like going to the recycle place with paper and plastic. There was also sport to watch on TV, it was the European championships in athletics. The night between Sunday and Monday there was a very impressive rainstorm with thunder and lightning. It kept me up for several hours. When I arrived at work in the morning I was met by a colleague saying there was water on the floor in the stacks. Because of the repairs to the lunchroom they had removed part of the concrete floor (which is the ceiling in the stacks). This rainstorm had produced so much water that it went through the covers and poured down the walls and even through the ceiling. There was water on two floors of the stacks and it had damaged eight shelf meters of books. All that is now frozen, in order to save it. Yesterday part of the ceiling fell down where the water had been so this will take a lot of work to repair, I think.
This week I have been to the storage four times in total and it's not good for my back problems. In addition to retrieving books we have done some much needed shelving. Part of the electrical shelving system has been down for two weeks and a few patrons are still waiting for their books. The shelves are stuck and we can't move them by hand, unfortunately. This morning my colleague who had arrived at the storage called me to say that the entire building (in fact the entire area) had no electricity. We can't retrieve any of the books there today. It seems to be a complicated problem as it happened several hours ago and it's still not fixed. And as if these problems weren't enough, one of the servers hosting several critical systems at the library is down. And all the technicians are on vacation. But we carry on as best we can.
I got some back problems last week so I decided to take it easy this past weekend. I only did some minor chores like going to the recycle place with paper and plastic. There was also sport to watch on TV, it was the European championships in athletics. The night between Sunday and Monday there was a very impressive rainstorm with thunder and lightning. It kept me up for several hours. When I arrived at work in the morning I was met by a colleague saying there was water on the floor in the stacks. Because of the repairs to the lunchroom they had removed part of the concrete floor (which is the ceiling in the stacks). This rainstorm had produced so much water that it went through the covers and poured down the walls and even through the ceiling. There was water on two floors of the stacks and it had damaged eight shelf meters of books. All that is now frozen, in order to save it. Yesterday part of the ceiling fell down where the water had been so this will take a lot of work to repair, I think.
This week I have been to the storage four times in total and it's not good for my back problems. In addition to retrieving books we have done some much needed shelving. Part of the electrical shelving system has been down for two weeks and a few patrons are still waiting for their books. The shelves are stuck and we can't move them by hand, unfortunately. This morning my colleague who had arrived at the storage called me to say that the entire building (in fact the entire area) had no electricity. We can't retrieve any of the books there today. It seems to be a complicated problem as it happened several hours ago and it's still not fixed. And as if these problems weren't enough, one of the servers hosting several critical systems at the library is down. And all the technicians are on vacation. But we carry on as best we can.
Thursday, July 7, 2016
Work issues
Friday evening I returned to the summerhouse to spend the weekend. My sister and her family were still there, although the guys went off to sports camp those days. On the Saturday I went to a fleamarket with my sister but we didn't get much. The weather was very varied with lots of clouds and pretty intense rain showers. (It still is). Sunday I had to ride one bus and three trains in order to get home again. It took most of the afternoon and evening.
Monday morning I was at work early because at 8 AM two students arrived in the stacks. We need to move some books again. It's folio format journals. Luckily it's all on the same floor so the distance is short. The students seemed to understand the job and started right away.
Apart from this I have spent much of the work week looking for books my colleagues couldn't find. There were some challenging cases. It took three attempts to find one of them. It had a call number I had never seen before (which is remarkable as I have worked there for almost 20 years). We have also rearranged the pick-up system for the patrons. We used to place the requested books by patron name but we have now changed it to a number system instead. Needless to say it didn't function to 100% from the start but we are working on it. There are fewer staff members everywhere now so I get more storage rounds and more desk duties at this time of year. We also get more requests from hobby researchers in the summer. These tasks can be quite difficult since those researchers are not familiar with our catalogues and often they need several shelf meters of material at once.
Monday morning I was at work early because at 8 AM two students arrived in the stacks. We need to move some books again. It's folio format journals. Luckily it's all on the same floor so the distance is short. The students seemed to understand the job and started right away.
Apart from this I have spent much of the work week looking for books my colleagues couldn't find. There were some challenging cases. It took three attempts to find one of them. It had a call number I had never seen before (which is remarkable as I have worked there for almost 20 years). We have also rearranged the pick-up system for the patrons. We used to place the requested books by patron name but we have now changed it to a number system instead. Needless to say it didn't function to 100% from the start but we are working on it. There are fewer staff members everywhere now so I get more storage rounds and more desk duties at this time of year. We also get more requests from hobby researchers in the summer. These tasks can be quite difficult since those researchers are not familiar with our catalogues and often they need several shelf meters of material at once.
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